Field
Aspects of the present invention generally relate to a technique for creating a visit plan by a serviceman.
Description of the Related Art
To maintain and manage an image forming apparatus, a serviceman regularly visits an image forming apparatus to be managed. The image forming apparatus to be managed is installed at various locations such as an office of each of users and the like. Therefore, the image forming apparatus is desirably efficiently visited. The problem that a visit plan to make an efficient visit is created is generally referred to as a traveling salesman problem. A technique for solving the problem is Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-209383. Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-209383 discusses a technique for creating a visit plan in consideration of a movement cost.
On the other hand, a visit plan of a serviceman for predicting a failure in an image forming apparatus and a consumption time and a failure occurrence of a part and replacing the part at an appropriate timing can also be created. For the part replacement, when a replacement time is earlier than a predicted failure time, a maintenance cost increases. A risk of the failure occurrence increases when the replacement time is later than the predicted failure time. As a technique considering these, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-217718 discusses a technique for creating a repair plan to simultaneously minimize a maintenance cost and a failure risk. The techniques are techniques relating to visit plans of apparatuses arranged at various positions. A target apparatus is not limited to the image forming apparatus.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2006-209383 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2009-217718, a visit plan is created in consideration of a movement cost, a maintenance cost, and a failure risk in a conventional technique. On the other hand, when a serious failure occurs in an apparatus to be managed, and the apparatus is brought into an inoperable state, a serviceman needs to be urgently called out to the apparatus in which the failure has occurred regardless of a visit destination during the plan. At this time, to shorten downtime of the apparatus, the serviceman needs to quickly move to an installation position of the apparatus.
However, in a conventional technique relating to visit plan creation, a visit plan considering such an urgent call-out has not been created. More specifically, a visit plan has not been created in consideration of an urgent call-out to a failure that has occurred in an apparatus excluded from the visit plan.